Monitoring the fat content of meats, e.g. butchered meat products and wursts, requires a rapid measurement of the fat content in a manner which will be least detrimental to the product and highly accurate. Earlier measurement systems have involved determination of specific gravity and the use of chemical analytical processes or X-ray absorption, the chemical techniques involving an infrared drying and like techniques which are generally time-consuming and only intermittently effective, i.e. cannot be carried out continuously.
In other words, by conventional processes it is not possible to obtain a rapid and continuous indication of the fat content. While the X-ray absorption approach does not damage the product, it must be carried out upon samples and specimens removed from the product so that the production process must be interrupted by the sampling requirement. In all cases, the specimens or samples are small, usually on the order of grams, except in the case of specific gravity measurements, in which case units of about 17 kg are measured.